Last weekend some 175,000 people in the Basque country demanded a 'right to decide'. For some, it means more autonomy from Spain, others independence. "We want to open a second front within the Spanish state," says one Basque politician.

EU ambassador to Turkey said member states may consider reopening accession talks with Ankara if Erdogan put an end to the post-coup state of emergency.

At the first summit in 15 years with Western Balkan leaders, EU chiefs made it clear that enlargement is not at hand - but offered economic incentives to keep the region close to the bloc.

The EU is prioritising motorways and gas pipelines across the potential accession Western Balkan countries, plus hydropower energy projects which threaten one of the world's freshwater biodiversity hotspots.

Unlocking Macedonia talks could be this year's big breakthrough in EU enlargement, but the devil's in the detail of Macedonia's constitution, as Macedonian prime minister Zoran Zaev and Greek PM Alexis Tsipras meet in Sofia.

Turkey has belittled the EU in a week of macho posturing, but strategic relations go deeper than the rhetoric.

Albania and Macedonia should start accession talks, but human rights abuses mean Turkey should stay on hold, EU says in draft report seen by EUobserver.

A country that has only 20 percent of the population of Greece and virtually no military forces cannot reasonably be considered a security concern.

In an annual progress report, European Commission says "independence of justice, law enforcement as well as national anti-corruption authorities need substantial improvement".

While Bulgaria aims to have all 28 EU countries in Sofia in May to give a boost to EU accession of the Western Balkans, some EU countries want to make sure their reservations about Kosovo are noted.

Ahead of an EU summit in Sofia in May, two different viewpoints look at Kosovo's future accession to the EU - one from Pristina and one from Brussels.

Bulgaria's prime minister Boyko Borisov described a meeting at the Black Sea resort of Varna between the presidents of Turkey, the EU council, and the European commission as "charged with great tension." Disputes remain far from resolved.

As EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker meet president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Bulgaria, their reluctance to use their diminishing leverage with Ankara means his dismantling of Turkey's democracy only speeds up.

Bosnia-Herzegovina needs a memorial to the 100,000 dead in the 1992 war, if it is to move on.